Iceman has become the X-Men’s ultimate weapon against global warming. Climate change is easily the most important environmental issue of the day, with the current Australian bushfires driving home the scale of the problem. In the comics, Iceman has a solution to help.
Superhero comics have traditionally been wary of having their superheroes apply their powers - and their insanely advanced science - to real-world problems. Global warming, however, is becoming an exception over in Marvel Comics. Marvel’s already revealed Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man’s solution, which involved the extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere from a facility on the Moon, with waste material dumped into an artificial black hole. And now the X-Men are responding to the crisis as well.
This week’s Marauders #5 sees the X-Men unleash an Omega level mutant against climate change. When Iceman learns of wildfires in the Arctic Circle, he decides it’s time he did his bit, and he teams up with Emma Frost’s brother Christian in order to travel out there. Once he’s on-site, Bobby Drake uses his powers to cool the air enough that snowfall and the flames are doused. It’s an impressive use of Iceman’s power, and it shows the X-Men are taking their responsibility to the planet seriously.
Or it would be, if not for the fact the comic clearly presents this as a spontaneous decision rather than an official act of Krakoa. Marauders #5 implicitly suggests that Iceman isn’t really the one who cares about climate change, either; Christian Frost is the real activist of the issue, but Bobby is attempting to impress him, and so he signs up for the trip to the Arctic Circle in order to show off. Still, at least he’s doing something about it, and this makes more sense than the last time the X-Men attempted to use their powers to solve the world’s problems. During the Avengers Vs. X-Men event, Cyclops attempted to weld the San Andreas fault with his optic blasts, which would have resulted in a build-up of pressure leading to worse earthquakes when the fault finally moved.
In the real world, 2019 did indeed see wildfires in the Arctic Circle. They are viewed by scientists as one of the most ominous signs of climate change to date. It’s too bad Bobby Drake is a fictional character and not able to help the climate crisis in real life. The X-Men would sure come in handy.
Marauders #5 is on sale now in comic book shops.
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